solid earth

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them.
-President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

sullivan on point

For the first time since the 1960s, we have a potential president able to transcend the victim-mongering identity politics so skillfully used by the Clintons. If this promise is eclipsed because the old political system conspires to strangle it at birth, the reaction from the new influx of voters will be severe. The Clintons will all but guarantee they will lose a hefty amount of it in the fall, as they richly deserve to. Some will gravitate to McCain; others will be so disillusioned they will withdraw from politics for another generation. If the Clintons grind up and kill the most promising young leader since Kennedy, and if they do it not on the strength of their arguments, but by the kind of politics we have seen them deploy, the backlash will be deep and severe and long. As it should be.

Thank you again MB. Keep them coming!

pigeon hole

It is ridiculous that anyone in their right mind would insinuate that it is anti-feminist to not back Hillary Clinton. To say that I should support a candidate because she is a woman is as sophomoric an idea as supporting Obama because he is black.

Would you vote for Ann Coulter if she were running?

Thank you to MB for forwarding me this link.

homophobic Loudoun

I have probably written this before - if so, than sorry.

My smallers have a gay aunt. They love their gay aunt. They loved her before she was their gay aunt and was just their aunt. That is in fact all they see her as. They also know that their aunt has this fantastic, completely wonderful, partner. We did not like their aunt's first couple girlfriends, but a couple years ago we knew that that she had found a real keeper, and they now live together in the house they bought and we get to see them for most holidays and random here and there visits.

I believe it was last year when Loudoun County pulled a student written play from the one act line up of plays to be performed in a local high school, because it had an implied gay kiss. Not an actual kiss mind you. They start to lean in, and then the lights go out. It went through a huge brou ha ha in order to get its chance. Now the cause of the homophobic tornado are two cute chinstrap penguins that decide to become parents. The big news is that they are both males. Two guys! They are boooooyyyyysssss. This has become enough of a reason to have the book Tango Makes Three pulled from the shelves. Granted, there are many people fighting this decision, but it will do no good.

I asked Small if he knew any other kids with gay parents or relatives, and he said that his friends and he never talk about it. Then he thought for a moment and said 'But I know a lot of kids who's parents are divorced.'

Right. That is perfect. Hello? Hello!? Can we please wake up a little here! Hello Loudoun County and all you other backwards counties that still cling to this caveman mentality! Wake up! The true story of two little penguins who learn to feel connected to each other enough to raise a chick is not a detriment to young minds. You who make the decision to withhold these books. You, yes, YOU are the detriment.

This is getting so tired and old. Enough already. The argument is old, and the worry is old, and the fear of same sex couples is just tired and silly. It is time to just let it go so we can spend those lengthy school board meetings doing some real work.

I am so frustrated.

please please vote

But while the world has changed around us, too often our government has stood still. Our faith has been shaken, but the people running Washington aren't willing to make us believe again.
It's the timidity - the smallness - of our politics that's holding us back right now. The idea that some problems are just too big to handle, and if you just ignore them, sooner or later, they'll go away.

…this is our time.
Our time to make a mark on history.
Our time to write a new chapter in the American story.

-Barack Obama

super vote

no, i don't want a pony

Amazingly Bhutto's assassination is what has given me the wake up slap across the face about our own political future. Maybe it was her whole live free or die attitude. I have not written about the primary, my most recent local election, or our current political happenings as of late, not from lack of material obviously. I have been in the most jaded funk of my life when it comes to politics. Whether it be the complete exhaustion in thinking about what Bush has done to this country, or the political rhetoric from the primary campaigns, or the commercialization of this country's government, I have been unable to find the wake up call until now. One of my friends says it's because I am a true idealist as well as a true cynic. That may be, but there is no political party for idealists. Especially one that would ever get elected. But there are moments of idealism, and leaders that can still inspire me. Listening to Obama speak after his Iowa win reestablished my big time crush on him. No, I do not want to do him, I have a crush on his intellect, his slight evocation of MLK, his relaxed composure. I went back and read Obama's June 2006 speech about faith and politics. His reasoning, his eloquence in that speech inspired me when I first read it and it still does. I need to keep looking for reasons to believe in our leaders. I know this sounds exceptionally starry eyed. Like our next president will come floating in on a wave of rainbows and sunshine. Well screw that. I will gladly take an insightful, thoughtful vision of our future. I am up for hearing about working together to make our world better and I will try to check my cynicism long enough to help out.

she did it anyway

I started to write something about Bhutto yesterday. It painted her with too much perfection, so I stopped. Whenever people die, or even more so when they are murdered, we want to remember them better than they were. She was not perfect. She was at times questionable, polarizing and imperious. Given that, she was also ballsy, courageous, patriotic and unwavering in her belief of what her country could become. In my whole life I will never live a day as bravely as she did. Here's to you, Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, you crazy, bad ass, defiant, brilliant, blaze of glory.

i have a wide stance

Anytime Mr. HPMelon and I bump into each other, accidentally brush up against one another, or hell, just feel like it, we say 'pardon me, I have a wide stance'. Then we just giggle like we are so frickin funny.

Craig has got to be one of the biggest bone heads in the history of bone heads. See, if you are a senator and get arrested for lewd behavior in a men's room, then hold a press conference where you declare 'I am not gay'; then that just means you are. But it also means you are gay (or bi) in the repressed, conservative republican kind of way; not in the self assured member of society kind of way.

Seriously though, I have a wide stance?

paper friday riff

-Seen the movie Children of Men? It was so good. Too bad it's real.












-Aaargh, Aaaah, I can't... I am just so... Why? Aaah! While the planet warms, Virginia would like to do their part by NOT taking any steps to solve the transportation issues that are causing gridlock and spewing noxious chemicals into our air. For a state with a surplus, and the ability, nay the request by area business owners to increase taxes here in NoVa, it is boggling that the state GOP requests that we cut funding in education and health services to pay for transportation needs. I just want a frickin' Metro people.

-On a much lighter note. I have fallen in love again. Isn't that great? Who cares that I will never meet my dear Vasily. But, hot damn, will you look at his eyes?

art skipping

Let me take a moment to bring your attention to a proposition that just passed in the Virginia General Assembly yesterday.

HB 1442 will require high school students to take 2 years of vocational training in order to graduate. I don't have a problem with the idea that high school students should be exposed to different fields prior to making their career or college choices. Under the new bill students will be required to take two years of a vocation that will

"(i) prepares students for entry into the workplace; (ii) leads to an industry certification or occupational competency assessment approved by the Board of Education; [ and or ] (iii) provides a foundation for further education or training or preparation for employment and shall be developed by the school division, consistent with Board of Education guidelines and as approved by the local school board."

This may seem benign enough, but in fact it hurls another rock at the arts which are NOT included in vocational training. The arts are not seen as a vocation. The only way to be exempt from this requirement is by being an ESL student or in an arts magnet school or acadamy (which are not an option to most of the state). The problem arises because when we require these students to take two years of vocational training it fills up their already booked school schedule. As it is, the elective classes (which currently encompass vocational and fine and performing arts classes) are already competing for students. This will add to the slow decline of the arts in our public schools. No matter how many studies show that students who take classes in the arts tend to be better and more creative students the progression to eliminating the arts in school continues. With this bill it is not done maliciously, but by omission. I don't want the bill eliminated, I want it to include the fine and performing arts, I want it to acknowledge that training in the arts could lead to a job.

one who confronts

As everyone has undoubtedly heard Saddam Hussein was hung. This event happens and I can scarcely wrap my brain around it. In an odd way Saddam was this mythical figure I grew up with.

When I was young and still trying to grapple with the interfaith roots that my parents had given me; I did a lot of searching through books on religion. When I first read about the end times it haunted me for months. I used to have dreams about the end times happening and me being left here on earth all alone, because I was the only one who would not be able to accept Jesus as my savior. I used to hear thunder and thought it was the horsemen of the apocalypse coming. I eventually got over my fear.

When I was in high school the gulf war occurred. I remember helping to coordinate a walk out and making signs calling for peace, we even made the nightly news. When I was returning to class after our peace demonstration, there was a vigil of 4 or 5 students who were praying. I thought that they too were part of our call for peace when I saw a small sign at their feet that said 'The end is near'. It quickly brought back the old fears. I remembered that there was to be an evil ruler in the east who would rise up. Then there were all the hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods that were happening. The late 80's and early 90's were an exceptionally active time for natural disasters. It felt like things were falling apart. All of a sudden the old nightmares came back to me. Saddam was part of my nightmare. A modern day bogeyman. He was the embodiment of these fears.

Luckily, even at that sensitive age I was still able to push away the nightmare. Scare tactics are scare tactics, and the can come from anywhere - the government, terrorists, and organized religion are just a few. The worst is when all three work together to conjure the bad dreams.

My rational side tells me there is no big scary cataclysm around the corner, but even so, I am always on edge during a seismic shift like this. The end times predict an evil ruler will rise in the east, but who's east? If you are standing in China your east is a lot different than mine. We have had tsunami's that have swallowed the land, hurricanes that drowned a city, and towers attacked and demolished. Amidst it all, a bogeyman was caught and is now gone. When I was younger this would have made more sense because back then Saddam was the face of my fears. I am, however, no longer a child. The convenient face of evil has been destroyed. Will it now be easier or harder to deal with the monstrosity that is the Iraq war? Without Saddam, our understanding of what we are fighting against gets murkier than it already was before his death.

Here is hoping that the new year is one of peace.

fax from the future

It has occurred to me that I am ill equipped to sway the average American voter to my causes. Not because I am a liberal. Because I don't watch TV. More importantly, I don't watch televised news. I cannot tolerate it. I refuse to be told what to feel about a news story by slick editing and bad, hallmark card like, audio. It makes me gag to see such pandering, spinning and sensationalism. I rely on print material and the internet to know what is going on.

How can I understand the vocabulary, the views, or the whims of most of America if I don't know what information they get and how they get it? Am I the one who is lost? Do I need to infiltrate the enemy camp? The other problem, of course, is that in addition to hating televised news, I have a great disdain for commercials and laugh tracks.

I recently got DVR, so now I can watch The Office and The Daily Show without commercials. In fact, what little television I do watch is now commercial free due to DVR. I no longer am subject to televised advertising; but television commercials are designed to target a demographic, to woo them in with visual and audio that has been decided upon with marketing research. It is, in essence, a mirror reflection of what the average consumer wants. Commercials are the direct response to our greed. Sellers know we want it on some level, now they just have to tap into that want.

So I missed seeing all the election ads last month. Now it seems to me that I did not do my homework. Don't those ads say as much about the group running them as they say about us here on the receiving end? I don't need the ads to make my decisions on who to vote for, or what to buy, but I have been feeling that I need those ads to be aware of how sellers disguise their pitch. How can I have an informed conversation if I am missing such a big piece of what television viewers are being exposed to? I studied both media effects and political communications back in college. I even toyed, for a short time with following that career instead of theatre, but in the end I could not take how plastic and processed it all seemed. It feeds on the lowest common denominator. I still am fascinated by it, I just don't want to have to watch the tripe myself. Next election I may have to suck it up. Thank goodness I have a little time.

clickable maps not black cat

Webb has it.

I stayed up last night until the majority of the returns came in. I was OBSESSESED with checking them county by county.

I did a little dance for Cardin, and many more dances through the night. I danced DEM style in my living room because I ended up not going to see Margot & the Nuclear So & So's and The Elected which was really depressing because I am in crush with them like a thirteen year old girl. But as the returns came rolling in my spirits lifted.

I know Webb has it and since Kaine is in charge of the Elections Board, the GOP will not be able to buy Allen the seat. Yesterday was a testament to how much everyone hates Bush and how much the democrats have been forced to become centrists. Gone are the innovators and the idealists. We said no to Bush and yes to marriage bans.

So where does this leave us?

Democratic in color if not in spirit?

Last time I checked Webb sounded like a conservative, as did several others who won democratic seats last night. This country is going through an identity crisis at the moment. Which is not a bad thing. It is healthy to have to look around and take note of what we have become. We need to recheck our path and rethink our priorities in a logical way. We need to do so without fear or anger looming over our heads. I am interested to see what our collective discoveries will be, or if the bulk of this country will take a pass on the introspection and just bury its head in the sand until 2008.

exercising tomorrow

I am a severe state of breath holding. I feel tense and nervous. The outcome of tomorrows elections is so on the fence that I can only pray for good weather and bake banana muffins (I cannot work the polls this time around, so I will swing by with goodies for those who can).

Please vote DEMOCRATIC people.

In Virginia, also vote NO TO #1.

Just vote.

Vote.